Pear and Boysenberry Frangipane Tart

I just learnt how to make frangipane in school and really enjoyed the mini raspberry frangipane tart that we made. I wanted to give it a try and make one big tart at home with the poached pears and boysenberries instead. The boysenberries were frozen ones that I bought from the orchard last month. I thought it will brighten the colour of the tart a little. I hope it is a nice combination in taste as well.

The tart case was not blind baked but instead, it was filled with frangipane and topped with fruits before baking. The leftover trimmings of the pastry dough was not wasted, I made a few roses and leaves to decorate the tart. 

Before baking

 When I filled the frangipane into the tart case, I was wondering if I had enough of the paste as it didn't come up to the top. Then I remembered that it will rise a little when baking so I think it will be alright. And sure enough, after topping with the fruits, it came out looking pretty tall. 

Fresh from the oven.

It took a long time in the oven, almost 55 minutes. I left it in the oven for a few extra minutes to make sure that the centre was cooked. The berries tinted the pears and the whole tart looked a little purplish. I like how the frangipane rose up in between the pears. The sweetcrust was a little dark but most said it was actually nicer because it was crispy. So I am happy with the result of my experiment. 

Berry Chocolate Mousse

I made a big batch of sweet crust pastry and kept it in the freezer for whenever I felt like baking something. Then I thawed a batch in the fridge last week, not really sure what I wanted to make. It was sitting in the fridge for a couple of days and I thought I should just bake some tart cases and maybe fill it with créme pâtissière and top it with fresh berries. 

Sweet crust tart cases.

 Then I was flipping the Bourke Street Bakery recipe book and found a chocolate mousse tart recipe which looked quite interesting. The recipe used raspberry puree as the filling but I thought I will make mine a little different, I used frozen mixed berries because that was what I had.

Folding in the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. 

 The recipe used 55% dark chocolate but I only had 72% dark chocolate, so once again I changed the recipe to suit my kitchen cabinet ingredients. Since I wanted to use frozen berries, I thought I should apply a thin layer of melted chocolate on the surface of the tarts as a protection from the moisture of the berries. The recipe says that the timing was important for making the mousse, so I wrote down every step before I started. 

The chocolate was melted with some cream, the egg yolks were whisked with the sugar over a pot of simmering water, the egg white was whisked to soft peak. The remainder of cream was whipped to soft peak. Then comes the mixing in of ingredients. The warm egg yolk was mixed into the warm chocolate, it has to be warm so that the mix doesn't cease. Then the soft whipped cream and whipped egg white are folded into the chocolate mixture. At this point, you could pour the chocolate mousse into cups and set it in the fridge. For today, I refrigerated it for 4hours before piping into the tart cases. 

Berry Chocolate Mousse Tart.

 I placed some frozen berries into the tart cases before piping the chocolate mousse to cover the berries. I tried a couple of designs, a plain nozzle one as well as a star tip nozzle. Then I also made some chocolate decorations to make it a little prettier. I tried dusting icing sugar on the tart because it looked really brown and dull but the icing sugar melted into the mousse. Haha.... not very smart eh! So I placed a few sprigs of mint leaves to give it some colour. 

Hidden berries.

 For the star rosette tart, I added some fresh strawberries to freshen the look up and it was delicious with the strawberries. The strawberries gave it a little tang and cuts through the rich chocolate flavour. The frozen berries were a bit too frozen when we ate it the first night which wasn't too nice. On the second night, they soften and the flavour had time to mingle in the fridge overnight. The taste and texture were much better the next day. 

Fresh strawberries as garnish.

A piece of tart for you?

Week 5 Puff Pastry

Week 5 was a heavy load. We had to make puff pastry for chicken stroganoff in vol-au-vent, sweet paste for fruit tartlets, pumpkin soup and bread rolls. 

I was in charge of making the vol-au-vent cases and the sweet pastry. The puff pastry was very interesting to make. There was way too much butter in the recipe and even after reducing the butter there were still too much of it!
I was very careful and patient with the pastry making process. You really need to let the dough rest in the fridge before each folds and don't forget how many folds you have made. This puff pastry had alternating folds of single turns and double turns. 

Well my vol-au-vent cases were slanting to a side because the oven fan was on. Sigh..Next time, I got to make sure I turn the fan off. But I was happy to see all the layers that puffed up. Not too bad for a newbie.

Nice golden colour and crispy layers.

The chicken stroganoff was prepared by my teammate. It was very nice and I have to admit, it is my first time eating chicken stroganoff. I quite like it. 

Shortcrust pastry filled with créme pâtissiere and topped with fruits.

Hmm... I actually tried making this at home before the practical day in class. The ones I made at home were not good. I think I overworked the dough and also it wasn't chilled long enough causing the cases to be hard. So I learnt from my mistakes and did pretty good in class. haha! Just that I wasn't too happy that it was still too thick and the edges were not tidy and smooth. I will have to try this again to get it right.

Yummy fruit tartlets.

Even though it didn't look too good, the texture light and crumbly. In other words, Yummy!!!